


Sophie and the Saga of Avoiding the Queen's Speech

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Copious amounts of tea, F/M, Gen, Rugby, howl being howl, howl being welsh, possibly inaccurate portrayals of how to do basic diy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27938882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: Sophie is very cross with the Wizard Howl. First, he went out without telling her. Second, he remained out for three days. Third, now that he's back, he keeps talking about something called the "Five Nations."
Relationships: Sophie Hatter/Howl Pendragon
Comments: 23
Kudos: 101
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Sophie and the Saga of Avoiding the Queen's Speech

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iphianassa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphianassa/gifts).



> This is....not accurate to any one particular rugby game in the mid-1980s. If it's egregiously wrong, please assume it's a different Five Nations in a different eighties. I've tried to keep my rugby talk to passably accurate...but who knows. Maybe this alternate Five Nations has different rules.
> 
> I also haven't read any of the other Howl books, so it's only compliant to Howl's Moving Castle.
> 
> Happy holidays! I hope you like it!

It had been, up until the time that Howl came back, a particularly peaceful few days. Sophie had done her mending, swept every room twice, placed every spider extremely carefully into a large box wherein she had placed a quantity of unconscious flies, put this box on the armchair so that no-one could say she was inhospitable, and replaced all of Howl’s potions and unguents and dyes with new ones that didn’t smell of cooked liver and aged carp.

She had made a batch of scones – though Calcifer had eaten a few of those. She had made a single enormous sticky fruitcake and then sat in bed and eaten every forkful. She had gone through the house and collected even more spiders, enchanted rather a number of flies, and moved everyone, threadlike limb by threadlike limb, into a bigger box. She had tried to reason with the leader, and had got nowhere. She had flicked water at Calcifer for laughing at her. She had made another batch of scones and given him none. She had made a batch of those flat little pancakes from Howl’s sister’s recipe but she could only puzzle out half the ingredients and must have gone wrong, because they turned out both soggy and burnt, somehow. She scraped the mess out into the moor and went to sit next to the spider box, and Calcifer laughed at her some more.

“It’s alright for you,” she said, sharply, “You always know what you want to do. Some of us have to do things before we can find it out.”

Then she got up and went to bed, with a very large cup of very hot tea and anger making her chest burn. She sat there, bundled up in midnight blue silk sheets and sulked for a few minutes until she had a word with herself. _What kind of woman do you think you are, Sophie Hatter? It’s as if you’ve never lacked company in your life. You used to make your own adventures. There you were, an Old Woman, and if he went off and never said a word to you you’d go and bring him back_. Sophie picked up a dried berry from the bedsheets and scowled at it as if it was her own brain, wrinkled and slightly red. _You’re a fool_ , she told herself and the berry, very sternly.

The next morning, Sophie stomped downstairs in her very long nightdress and one of Howl’s many dressing-gowns, because someone was wrestling very loudly with the door.

“What have you done?” Howl wailed, as the doorknob rattled. He must have been pulling with some force, because the wood of the door was beginning to bend. “Sophie!”

Sophie scowled at the door, and at Howl through it even though she couldn’t see him.

“Ridiculous old woman,” he muttered, almost under his breath, and stopped yanking at the door. He knocked.

Sophie kept scowling, and started to make pancakes. She wasn’t about to let his shouting stop her from having a nice, restful breakfast, the kind of breakfast she has been intending to have every day that he was gone but hadn’t quite managed. She started the tea steeping as well. If she used the bigger teapot it was only because she’d taken to having cups of tea as big as her head. There was no other reason whatsoever and she’d thank Calcifer to stop sniggering.

“Can you unlock the door, please, Sophie?”

She sighed and put the whisk down. One stern talking to later, she had opened the door and Howl was coming in, dripping wet, carrying a very large bag made of some sort of tartan that somehow wasn’t fabric. A large black disk and a series of dangerous looking tubes stuck out of it.

“What’s that?” she asked, stomping back over to her pancakes and flipping them. She focused her energies on glaring at them so that they wouldn’t burn or stick, while Howl heaved the bag inside.

“A project I’m undertaking,” Howl said, gasping slightly and leaning against the back of the chair. She watched as he tapped his fingers against the spider house. “You’ll see.”

“Is it going to get us chased around by witches?” She turned the pancakes onto two plates, and then scraped the last one towards Calcifer, who gobbled it up with a crunchy, crackly noise.

“No. It’s utterly harmless. Well. Mostly,” he took down two cups from a shelf and made the tea quickly and somewhat quietly. His damp hair and clothes sizzled as he bent towards the fire. He was singing something Sophie didn’t recognise under his breath.

He presented her with her tea, and she sat down. Something inside her chest seemed to loosen, like a knot that finally deigned to be unpicked. “You weren’t kidnapped then,” she said.

“Was I likely to be?” He spoke around a mouthful of pancake and she was painfully aware that when she looked at him, there wasn’t as much ire in her as there should have been.

“Hmph.”

He was clever enough to hide his smile in his cup of tea. “I’ll need your help with it. It should behave if you’re involved. Last time I tried it I ended up stuck with a week of the Queen’s Speech. I’m still not certain how that happened but I think I had the wrong signal.”

Sophie looked at the black disk, cautiously. She kept expecting the bag to move, as if it held some sort of stroppy creature. “What is it?”

“It’s called a satellite dish.”

Sophie thought she’d heard something like that somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. She decided it must be a bit like a lobster kettle.

“Hmph,” she said again, into her tea.

Howl, sat beside her, resettled himself. His whole body seemed to start collapsing in on itself. He was mostly dry by now, of course, but he hadn’t managed to squeeze a sulk in yet. Better to let him get on with it. She took the empty mug and plate out of his lap, and he slowly crumpled there. Calcifer mumbled something about a pile of ashes, and Sophie pulled a blanket from a shelf to tuck over him. He looked half asleep. Trust him not to look after himself for three entire days. She tutted and went to wash up.  
For two hours it was like living with a statue. She would provide the occasional cup of tea, and then after twenty minutes it would be gone even though she never saw him move. She was almost certain he wasn’t asleep. Wrangling the creature into the strange tartan bag, even after catching it with the satellite dish, must have been exhausting.  
Sophie found herself feeling a little guilty. There he was, going off doing all manner of dangerous things, and she had been so cross with him for leaving without telling her that she’d managed to lock the door against him. She made sure the next cup of tea she made him was done properly, with exactly the right amount of sugar. It would perk him up a bit.

It was rather peaceful, really, sitting there. Howl, still and crumpled as a gargoyle, Calcifer sleeping quietly. She finally felt relaxed enough to pick up her darning. It was easier to sew when you felt relaxed, she thought. There wasn’t quite as much danger in it. Last time she tried to darn when she was restless she had stabbed her fingers every few stitches and the socks had come out with a tendency to make people scatterbrained. Howl wore them on his days off, so that no-one trusted him with a new commission.  
She had managed to finish the toes of one when Howl and Calcifer, in unison, yawned and stretched. The blanket fell off Howl and he scrambled up to his feet, all of a sudden full of his usual vim. He got half the way across the room, far more sparkly now that he was dry, and then paused, went back, and flung the blanket onto a bench.

“Did you not have a look at it?” he asked, fiddling with the bag until it came open and a whole mass of black tubes fell out. He rescued the black disk and laid it very carefully on the floor.

“No,” she said, as he pulled a large grey box out of the bottom of the bag, and then a far smaller box covered in little buttons. There was no creature to be seen, and Sophie started to feel a little silly.

She tidied away her darning, because she had a sinking feeling that this would take up all her attention and besides feeling silly always made her stitches come out lumpy.  
Howl stood back from the pile of things and frowned at them. Sophie came over to stand next to him and frown at them too.

“What does it do?” she asked.

“It’s supposed to show me things happening in other worlds.” He sounded distracted, and then reached into the bag again and pulled out a thick white book. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he flicked through it. He was already looking frustrated, and when Howl looked frustratedly through spellbooks all hell had a tendency to break loose.

“Wouldn’t that have been useful before?”

“I did already try it once. I told you.”

“And you stopped because of the Queen, I know, but that doesn’t usually stop you. Were you worried she was going to get you to do something?” She hoped she wouldn’t have to pretend to be his mother again. She didn’t think that would work very well at the moment.

“Oh, not that sort of Queen.” He picked up the disk, and then put it down again. Then he peered at one side of the large box, and poked it.

“So why are you trying again now?”

“It’s the Five Nations,” he said, obscurely, in a tone of some finality.

Sophie scowled to herself. “Well then, I can’t see how I’m to be helpful.”

Howl ignored her, still poking at the back of the large box and then looking at the disc and occasionally the tubes. She wasn’t feeling especially diplomatic, any more. Moreover, she couldn’t see why these Five Nations, whatever they were, needed Howl to sort them out. Perhaps each nation was really a different world. That hardly seemed like Howl’s cup of tea. Surely these worlds had their own wizards, or perhaps someone more central who was in charge of all the worlds, an auditor or an advisor or a fixer or something. Someone who had studied politics and could tell them what to do. Not Howl, who didn’t really trust things like kings and emperors and heads of state.

Howl swore eloquently and thumped down onto the floor.

Sophie caved. “What’s the matter with you now?”

“This,” Howl said, sharply, “Is a job for no man. I can make head nor tail of the stupid thing. I shall just have to teleport myself into the stadium and deal with the gathered throng.”

Sophie knew what to do about this, at least. “Now, now,” she said, gathering herself and putting on her best old-woman voice.

Howl looked at her balefully.

“There’s no reason to get yourself all in a twist like that,” she continued. He looked as if he didn’t appreciate being spoken to like a stroppy toddler who didn’t understand how jigsaws worked, but his shoulders were slowly relaxing. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, and we’ll fix it together.”

After a moment of glaring at her while his mouth wobbled as if he was deciding whether to fill the room with slime or not, he spoke. “I have to attach that,” he pointed to the disk, “Onto the side of the castle. Then I have to attach the wires,” he pointed to the tubes, “To the satellite dish. Then I have to bring the wires inside and plug them into the television.” He paused. “I think. I might need an aerial.”

Sophie didn’t deign to ask what an aerial was. It would lessen her authority. Instead, she picked up the satellite dish rather gingerly and carried it upstairs. Howl scrambled after her, following like a puppy. The bedroom window stuck a bit, but she managed to heave it open and lean out. Howl’s hand closed around her leg as she wiggled slowly further and further out. The air was very cold today, she thought, as the wind wiggled through her dangling hair. She twisted herself about, listening to muffled noises from Howl all the while. She held up the satellite dish and noticed it had a long part on one side, which seemed like it ought to attach to a wall reasonably well. She wiggled back in a bit, and twisted around some more, and held the satellite dish’s long part against the wall. The wall sulked. Sophie opened her mouth to remonstrate with it, but her words were pulled away by the wind and she had to settle for an eloquent facial expression and a demonstrative gesture. The wall seemed to shrug, and Sophie slipped a bit as Howl must have lost his balance. Sophie clutched the satellite dish to her chest and waited for her heart to calm down. The wall slowly came to the conclusion, apparently, that no, it would not enjoy masonry screws getting in its bricks and itching, and Sophie relinquished the satellite dish to its custody. She expressed to the wall – again through facial expressions and gesticulations – that it looked very handsome with the satellite dish perched there like a fascinator, and then Howl pulled her inside with one clean tug.

She landed on the bedroom rug with a thump, and lay there for a moment catching her breath. Howl had a very sulky look on his face, worse even than a few minutes ago. He thumped next to her, and Sophie braced to be covered in a wave of slime.

“You didn’t tell me!” Howl said, his voice almost vibrating.

“You didn’t tell me either!”

“You could have fallen!”

“You could have been killed!”

“I wouldn’t! I was only in Wales.”

Sophie sat up slowly and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You never said that. For all I knew you were going off to worlds no-one ever saw before. You do have a habit, you know.”

Howl shrugged, vaguely and unhappily. “I didn’t mean to be three days, but none of the shops had wires long enough and I had to go all the way to Manchester.” He made a disgusted sound.

Sophie leaned towards him a little bit, and he leant towards her. Their shoulders met in the middle and stayed there, spreading warmth from one to the other.

“You dusted away the cobwebs again,” Howl said.

“Shut up,” Sophie said, and rested her cheek against his collarbone.

-

The television, because it was indeed a television, crackled to life and then stayed there, crackling. Sophie looked at the small box in her hand, and pressed a few of its raised buttons. The television continued crackling. Howl sighed, as was his wont.

“This is what it did last time.”

Sophie made a thinking sort of face, and then stopped, because she felt very aware that it made her look like a fish. She went around to the back of the television and poked and wiggled at the wires that went into its back.

“I’ll miss the pre-game at this rate,” Howl said, and stood there helplessly as Sophie poked and prodded, “Maybe the dish is facing the wrong way.” He made up for his helpless standing by going upstairs to reason with the wall.

Sophie stood guard over the television, remote control clutched in her hand. After a few minutes, the crackling seemed to change tenor, and Sophie mumbled something encouraging under her breath. The television’s crackling began to sound rather like Calcifer’s did when he was unhappy, and then suddenly the grey, sparkling scene gave way to another scene of a man sitting at a desk holding some papers. The man mouthed, silently, and Sophie backed out of his view. She wasn’t wholly sure if the man could see her or not but she didn’t want to take chances, especially as she was still wearing her nightdress.

Howl came bounding and clattering downstairs. “Is it working?” he asked, a little cheer back in his voice.

“Shh!!”

Howl frowned at her, and then looked at the television. “Oh!” he said, jumping over the banister rather than finishing the staircase in the proper manner, “I told you it just needed your touch.” He went over to the television and pressed a few things, and in increments the man started speaking louder and louder.

“And now,” the man said, “We turn to the city of Colchester, which has had an influx of a rather strange animal population. Our correspondent, James Whitaker, is on the-” He went back to mouthing, as Howl pressed the buttons again.

“What did you do that for?”

Howl frowned at her and gently peeled the box out of her hand. As he spoke he began to tap at it. “I’m not interested in the strange animals of Colchester,” he said.  
The scene on the television changed, and suddenly several men were sitting around one table. Howl pressed the buttons that let them be heard again, and Sophie stood there in strong consternation as he fussed around, putting the kettle on top of Calcifer to boil and then digging in a cupboard. He vanished inside it for a few minutes and then, after a series of increasingly distressing thumps and yelps, came out with a large red jumper with the word WALES emblazoned on it in white, and a very long red and white striped scarf.

Sophie started to feel very silly again. She wasn’t wholly sure where she’d managed to get the wrong end of the stick, but she now felt certain that she had been holding the said wrong end of the stick very firmly for most of the morning. She put the tea together to busy herself while Howl wrestled with the jumper and scarf. Sophie felt quite certain that if the men in the television could see out of the television, Howl would have been doing his wrangling in the bathroom, but she pulled Howl’s dressing gown tightly around herself anyway. It would pass for a housecoat. She felt the dressing gown wiggle on her body until it fit more smoothly, and looking down at it she realised it had decided to help her dignity by becoming a housecoat, if only temporarily. Now that she came to think of it, one of Howl’s favourite winter coats had a remarkable similarity to one of his thicker dressing gowns.

She poured out the tea and Howl took a cup, patting the sofa for her to sit down next to him. His face had been gradually brightening the longer the television had stayed on the men around their table, and now he looked positively giddy.

“I can’t let you go off and leave me with this thing,” he said, “What if you’re the only thing keeping it sensible? What if you get up in the middle to do some darning or go and badger an old witch about some other sister, and I miss the winning try?”

“It would serve you right,” Sophie said, but she sat down beside him with her tea and he flopped the end of the very long scarf around her shoulder. She had to move her tea so that the dangling fringe didn’t get in it and make it taste of wool.

The scene on the television changed to show a large pitch, far larger than the children in town ever had to play on. It looked rather like it was at the bottom of a bowl, which made Sophie feel slightly uneasy. It seemed rather like the kind of place she had always imagined fights to the death would take place in, and when she shared this with Howl he made a very uncomforting sort of hmm-ing sound.

Her dramatic expectations went unfulfilled as a large number of very thick-set men in matching uniforms came out onto the pitch and stood there in a line. Watching them file up, on two sides and in two sets of uniforms, Sophie realised with a strong sense of anti-climax that this was, in fact, a Sports Game. Sophie gave it some quiet thought, as the two lines of men began to sing, off key but at high volume, one after the other.

“Is this rugby?” she asked, pronouncing it cautiously.

“Did I not tell you that?” Howl asked, “I’m sure I said so.”

“You said it was the Five Nations.”

“That’s two of them,” he pointed to the television. “The ones in the white shirts are England, and the ones in the red are Wales.”

“You made all that palaver to watch rugby?” Sophie thought she ought be forgiven for sounding a bit indignant. Too many things making her feel silly in one day had a tendency to make her cross.

“What else would I make a palaver over?”

Sophie didn’t deign to answer.

-

The little men on the television had been running around excitedly for some time now. Every so often Howl would start to bounce in his seat, and then subside with a heavy groan when something didn’t happen, or maybe when it did happen, Sophie wasn’t wholly sure. She had a hard time telling where the ball was, most of the time, and just had to estimate from the direction they were running in. It struck her as an odd game. You couldn’t kick the ball, except when you could. You couldn’t hit the other players, except when you were all bent into the shape of a shuffling earwig, and then you could do anything. Howl protested this, but he had also protested the referee when one of the red players had caught the ear of one of the white players. As far as Sophie could tell from Howl’s reactions and the radiating rage that was making the poor lavender cower in its pot, the red players were allowed to do whatever they wanted and the white players weren’t.

Nevertheless, Sophie found herself dragged into it. There was something about the way the audience would shout simultaneously if something happened, a kind of energy. It would bounce from the television to Howl and then to her, and she’d get pulled along. Gradually she found herself following the ball, and making some of the right kind of faces, though maybe about the wrong team, because sometimes Howl would look at her a bit funny and shrug to himself. When one of the red players threw themselves on the ground at one end of the field, the audience and Howl would cheer, and a number at the edge of the screen would go up, but Sophie wasn’t really sure she understood how that worked, either. It seemed to go up in fits and starts, a bit at a time.

One of the Welsh players fell hard across the line, and Howl started to bounce in his seat. The little man in black and white started waving his hands, and all the rest of the red Welsh players, who seemed rather red all over now, stopped still on the field. Howl stopped bouncing, and Sophie glanced up at him. He was going rather red now, too, and she rather thought she could hear a kettle.

Afraid she was going to see him pop, she looked away and focused on the television instead. The man in black and white suddenly fell right over, and, after a moment’s confusion from the players, had to be carried off the field. Sophie looked at Howl again, and the sense of him as a bubbling kettle had receded into a sharp look of satisfaction.

“What did you do?”

“Why do you think that was me?”

“Because you look like Calcifer after he’s finished a plate of bacon.”

Howl looked uncomfortable. “I might have made him inhale his own whistle.”

Sophie hmm’d. The television was showing the same thing over again, though cutting off the part with Howl’s intervention.

Sophie found herself saying, quite to her own surprise: “Well, it is over the line.”

“See! He deserves to choke on his whistle.”

Sophie did consider that a bit far, but there were several things about this game she considered a bit far so she left it.

A second man in black and white appeared, whistled unaccosted, and the game carried on. The try was allowed to stand, and Sophie wondered where those words had come from, too. She looked at Howl, and wondered if he’d planted those words like try and over the line in her head, but he looked perfectly innocent except for the lingering satisfaction over the referee – there it was again! – and so she left it, and went to make another cup of tea.

A few minutes later, as the kettle dragged its heels, play stopped, and the scene on the television changed back to the men sitting around the table.

 _England has been doing well today_ , one of the men said, _And it’s been a decade since they lost to Wales at Twickenham_.

Howl made a vague noise of disagreement, and Sophie looked up. She watched the television scatter light across his face, and took a deep breath. Somewhere in her soul she still felt a little nervous for him.

_Wales have had the majority of possession, of course, but England’s defensive line have stopped that from turning into a wipe-out scorewise. Wales also need to work on their passing; if they keep this up the referee will have to have a word, maybe even award a penalty to England. Obviously only one so far has been awarded, but several of those passes looked borderline to me, Frank._

Sophie tutted to herself. “That’s hardly fair,” she said, stirring the tea. She came back over and sat down, and Howl took the tea from her, his eyes on her face. “Well, they’ve both been as bad as each other, haven’t they? And that boy with the helmet on, he wouldn’t let go of the ball, and the other one with the shoulders,” Sophie groped for some of those newly appeared words, “He collapsed the, the-” The man on the television in the blue shirt said scrum and Sophie grabbed at it, “The scrum. Someone could have been hurt.”

Howl put his tea in between his knees and held it there as he unwound his scarf from around his neck. He sat there, for a moment, with it in his hands, and then draped it carefully around her neck, making sure not to get the tassels in her tea. She frowned at him, confused, and then much to her surprise he dipped himself forward and kissed her gently on the cheek.

“You’re a marvel,” he said, and then shouted in pain.

He had, in his distraction, forgotten the precarity of his tea and dropped it all over his socked feet.

Sophie sighed, and made him another cup.

-

Wales won, of course. Sophie never said anything else about it, but it cheered him up enough that his scalds cleared right up, so it worked out in the end.


End file.
